Food insecurity: are we moving towards more inclusive sustainable food systems?

The latest INSEE figures from June 2022 confirm that food insecurity continues to grow in France, under various guises and that people are still reluctant to use food aid for fear of judgment. Faced with this reality, new forms of access to quality food for all are being deployed. They share common values, including putting the public at the centre of actions and providing them with non-stigmatising access. These initiatives identify themselves as implementing “food democracy”, “food justice” or contributing to ensuring “the right to food”. Research accompanies this multiplication of actions. The public authorities are not to be outdone, but are they up to the need to change the scale of these forms of access and the demands for inclusion? What does the opinion issued by the National Food Council in October 2022 say? And what about the new “sustainable food aid fund” announced on November 3 and endowed with 60 million euros for 2023? Here is an overview of the dense news of this autumn.

Autumn 2022, a rich news for food solidarity

Through the support of numerous initiatives for more than ten years, we have been able to observe a rise in approaches to access to quality food for all, mobilizing the “right to food”, “food democracy” or “food justice”. These terminologies raise questions, which is why a brainstorming session on these subjects was co-organised by the Foundation at the beginning of September, as part of the symposium of the International Cultural Centre in Cerisy-la-Salle “Eating together to remake the world”, prepared by CIRAD, INRAE and the firm Transitions. This event explored the levers used by these initiatives to mobilize the political and citizen component of the subject of access to food.

A few weeks later, the Science-Society Meetings “For Food Solidarity” of the UNESCO Chair in World Food Supplies brought together for the first time a community of more than one hundred and fifty initiative leaders, local authorities and researchers committed to these subjects. Those present expressed the need to continue to meet, exchange, learn collectively and contribute to the transformation of the fight against food insecurity in France.

An important opinion on the prevention and fight against food insecurity was adopted on 19 October 2022 by the National Food Council (CNA), a State advisory body. It recognizes the need to build a food democracy to promote access for all to food compatible with a sustainable food system. Its conclusions include the need to consider food as a fundamental right and to develop initiatives that complement or alternative to food aid. ” The important citizen participation system orchestrated by the CNA’s interministerial secretariat, with which I had the honour of being associated, deserves to be commended,” explains Mathilde Douillet, head of the sustainable food programme at the Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation. It made it possible to bring to the discussions, the priorities and recommendations formulated on the basis of the experience of real situations. An essential perspective to integrate to meet needs and expectations! »

The Committed and Supportive Food House in Lyon

The Vrac France association acts against food insecurity by placing citizen participation at the heart of its brand new Maison Engagée et Solidaire de l’Alimentation (Mesa), inaugurated on October 15, 2022. Designed as an experiment, this food and solidarity third place in the heart of the 8th arrondissement of Lyon is intended to be splintered.

” Through the collective appropriation and co-construction of the project with the inhabitants of the neighborhood, we want to make the Mesa a real space of food democracy where people affected by food insecurity can take back control of their food and formulate proposals. »

Lorana Vincent – National Coordinator Bulk France

Values shared by the initiatives, communities in need of support

Through the construction of initiatives and experiments combining the fight against social inequalities in health, the development of the power to act of people in precariousness, citizenship, social ties, the relocation of agriculture, the agroecological transition and the fair remuneration of producers, each civil society actor has its own vision of what access to quality food should be for all. Despite a few nuances, common values bring them together. An example shows how these initiatives concretely reflect their desire for solidarity with farmers: many never negotiate the purchase prices of local agricultural products.

Today, there are many actors who uphold these values, which until recently were considered as “alternative” experiments, but who embody the measures to combat tomorrow’s precariousness. Today, they mainly lack the ability to sustain their business model. Some have successfully rolled out nationally thanks to strong public support from the recovery plan: such as the purchasing groups for quality products in the working-class Vrac neighbourhoods or the social and solidarity grocery stores with a mix of public and sustainable and local supplies in Ugess. However, this funding will soon come to an end and no structural funding relay has been announced to them, which risks endangering their sustainability and the continuation of their spin-offs, commensurate with the requests they receive. The State shifts the responsibility to the local authorities which, in the face of multiple crises and due to a lack of acculturation, have only very weakly and unevenly taken over. For example, a small share of food projects in territories include considerations on access to food, and an even smaller share of this percentage is open to approaches based on the inclusion of the people concerned.

The development of food projects in more sustainable, supportive and democratic territories is precisely the objective of the experimental cooperation of the five national partners of Territoires à Vivres (Civam Network, Cocagne Network, Catholic Relief, Ugess, Vrac). This experimental project benefits from the political support of the local authorities in Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier and Toulouse, but was made possible mainly by France Relance, and will need significant new public support to last.

From the experience of the Foundation’s partnerships with local authorities, in the Tetraa program, many elected officials and technicians are in need of training and support, in order to act with more ambition for sustainable food systems that are also more inclusive, democratic and supportive. The Territorial Conference on Agroecological Transition and Sustainable Food, which was held in Nantes in September 2022, has indeed chosen as a priority theme for its Declaration: “Taking climate change and social emergency into account in agricultural and food policies, in order to ensure access to quality food for all.

Another common conviction drives these initiatives: the change in agricultural practices and public policies will require the mobilization of those most affected, consumers and producers.

Social security for food

Since 2019, a collective has been working to build and carry out a national social security project for food (SSA). Accessible to all, this model is based on the idea of a direct transfer to eaters of a sum for food and an agreement for professionals carried out by democratically managed funds. In recent years, local experiments have been born throughout the country, in particular thanks to philanthropic and public funding, as in Montpellier for example, supported by the Foundation via the Feeding the Future Call for Projects and as part of the Territoires à Vivres project. These experiments help to affirm the right to food and dignity, by putting the power of action of people in precarious situations at the centre.

Promoting the societal contribution of innovative food projects

The strong mobilization of civil society in the fight against food insecurity remains largely invisible to decision-makers and the media. To raise awareness and raise questions about access to quality food for all, we can use a variety of artistic levers. The film The Others’ Share raises public awareness of the ability of food to include and exclude, and opens the debate on the creation of social food security. Produced by the Civam network (Centre d’initiatives pour valorisation l’agriculture et le milieu rural), it is being screened in a hundred theaters throughout France during the months of October and November 2022, as part of the Alimenterre festival, coordinated by the French Committee for International Solidarity. Another project highlighted by videos: the Solaci research project, co-led by the Vrac & Cocinas association, has led to the production of several short films on food solidarity initiatives, led by the inhabitants of the Hérault during the health crisis.

The question of assessing the impacts of these experiments and initiatives arises in order to consider their sustainability. The systemic nature of food requires a change of perspective and tools, whether to make visible the engineering necessary for collective action at the territorial level, the animation that makes participation and inclusion possible, or to evaluate the effects on dimensions such as social ties, citizenship or the power to act. CIRAD, the University of Toronto and the UNESCO Chair in World Food Systems are collaborating through the Urbal project to propose a method for mapping the impacts of innovation in food systems and their evolution. This methodology has served as inspiration: it has been applied to several projects for access to quality food, including those of the Vrac association. Two training sessions are organized by the researchers on December 5 and 12 in Montpellier. Sign up ! A book will be published in early 2023.

Measuring Episol’s impacts: making it visible to strengthen dialogue with partners and funders

The social and solidarity grocery store open to all Episol, located in Grenoble, combines fixed and mobile grocery stores, an integration project, a solidarity basket system, as well as an anti-waste component (recovery of unsold goods from local supermarkets and the Grenoble market of national interest for redistribution and recovery). As an active member of the Ugess network, this project is particularly interesting for promoting access to quality food for all. But how can these achievements be better valued? In 2022, Episol began an analysis of the changes generated by the grocery store’s actions with the people involved and/or impacted by the implementation of the project: better access to food in quantity and quality, the fight against isolation, living together, the quality of reception, the fight against unemployment and the social and professional integration of employees in integration, involvement and participation in the territorial dynamic or the improvement of the environmental impact.

“The evaluation of social impacts allows us to validate the coherence of the associative project, to verify that it meets the needs and that the action has a real impact on the priority beneficiaries. It is also a tool that speaks to funders and seems essential to validate the relevance of their support. »
Julie Baume-Gualino – Director Episol

In this diversity of initiatives and approaches, the Foundation observes common values as well as a shared ambition: to contribute to a just transformation of food systems by and for all inhabitants in a spirit of food democracy. Faced with ever-growing needs, the community of actors who carry this ambition is now more than ever under pressure and needs reinforced and sustainable support. Have the public authorities taken the measure of these needs? On November 3, 2022, the Prime Minister announced the creation of a new fund “for sustainable food aid” of 60 million euros. It would be a complementary fund to current public funding, distributed in the form of calls for projects. It will be renewed over the next five years. Half of it would be reserved for the eighteen associations authorised to provide food aid at the national level and focused on the purchase of quality foodstuffs and the support of people. Thirty million would be devoted to the territorial component for innovative experiments including sustainable food vouchers or food projects in solidarity and inclusive territories.